Investors still hopeful for Tesla despite the failed target achievement in 2016

Investors don’t seem to mind that Tesla Motors failed to achieve its delivery targets for the full year 2016. It seems that their optimism for Tesla’s growth is still very high despite the failed target achievement, simply because deliveries in 2016 are still much higher than the figure a year ago.

In press release published on January 3, 2017, Tesla said it produced a total of 83,922 vehicles in the full year 2016, or around 64-percent more than the California-based carmaker manufactured in 2015. Of these, 76,230 vehicles have been delivered to its new owners, which means that these units were promptly delivered to customers with no issue on paperwork.

Tesla doesn’t count ordered vehicles as delivered units. This delivery figure is short of the delivery prediction made in February 2016, when Tesla said that it aimed to deliver between 80,000 and 90,000 vehicles for the full year 2016. Tesla had adjusted this predicted figure to 79,000 units, but still failed to achieve the adjusted delivery target.

In the fourth quarter of 2016, Tesla manufactured a total of 24,882 electric vehicles, of which only around 22,000 units were promptly delivered during this period. Model-wise, Tesla delivered around 12,700 Model S units and 9,500 Model X SUVs in the last quarter of 2016. According to the carmaker, it didn’t consider around 2,750 vehicles as delivered units, no thanks to last-minute transportation delays as well as the inability of some customers to physically receive their Tesla vehicles. Tesla noted that even though these vehicles were already paid in full, it didn’t count them as deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Tesla said that its production in the fourth quarter was adversely affected by certain issues that hounded the carmaker from the end of October to early December. These issues – including the shift to the new Autopilot hardware – heavily affected production in the quarter, although Tesla was able to recover and achieve its production targets. However, the production delays ultimately affected deliveries in the fourth quarter, with some vehicles failing to reach their new owners before the end of the year. At the end of the fourth quarter, around 6,450 vehicles were already on their way to customers, and these units will be recorded as deliveries in the first quarter of 2017.

Tesla’s failure to achieve its intended target was offset by the fact that it managed to significantly surpass deliveries in 2015, which was pegged at 50,557 units. Because of this, investor confidence remained high. In fact, a day after Tesla announced its delivery figures for 2016, its stock price jumped three percent to $223.55, reaching a peak of $227.